Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Raddle Me This

What is light brown, wears a green coat, and leaves red marks? Elwood in his spiffy green sheep coat and his ram marking harness.

Just look at that handsome fellow! He has been in with his ewes for two days and has already marked two ewes. That red thing between his front legs is a marking crayon (or raddle.) In 17 days (the average length of a sheep heat cycle) the red will get replaced with blue. If he did his job properly all the ewes should have bred in the first 17 days, but someone may have just been finishing ovulation when he joined the group. He has been spending all day sniffing urine and slobbering in ewes' ears.

Mama Sadie was marked on the first day, but her mark isn't as dark as Moose's. Moose was marked on the second morning. And she was love sick. She followed Elwood around, sniffing him, and just being all flirty.

Hopefully we will have lambs in early March. Moose was such a good mother. I hope she has twins this time.